Are advertising people normal?

Those who work in advertising often wonder if they live in a sort of bubble. You wonder, are civilians as active on social media and as inclined to pay attention to what brands are doing on Twitter, and is the rest of the world as preoccupied with that award-winning ad campaign that industry types can’t stop talking about?

The unsurprising answer is no, according to a study commissioned by San Francisco-based advertising agency Heat and conducted this past March by iThink, which found that people who work in advertising and marketing are worlds apart from the "normal" people when it comes to how they use social media and how they view social media marketing.

By the way, the survey also revealed that ad professionals tend to engage in more bad behavior at office holiday parties. More on that later.

First, mull these findings on how advertising/marketing professionals use Facebook as compared to the general public:

• 71% of advertising/marketing professionals say they pay attention to brand posts in their Facebook news feed “all of the time” versus 23% of the general population. As for Twitter: 92% of advertising/marketing professionals use Twitter to follow brands they like. 33% of the general population does so.

Should brands put more effort into interacting with consumers via social media?

• 63% of advertising/marketing professionals “strongly agree” that they should; 23% of the general population “strongly agree”

Meanwhile, digital marketing campaigns that are endlessly discussed in the advertising industry aren’t so well known in the wider world. Chew on this:

• 70% of advertising/marketing professionals were aware of Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” digital marketing campaign vs. 8% of the general population; as for the mega-award-winning Jay-Z "Decoded": 63% of advertising/marketing professionals aware of campaign vs. 9% of the general population.

And the study also seems to suggest that the Mad Men stereotypes aren’t off the mark: Subjects were also asked about how they act at office holiday parties, and it appears that people who work in advertising are more likely to puke from drinking too much (37% vs. 9% of the general public); do drugs (26% vs. 3% of the general public); and hook up with a coworker (26% vs. 8% of the general public). If you work in advertising, these results likely aren’t surprising to you.